“RNA-programmable CRISPR-Cas9 system could be useful as a versatile system for genome editing in cells of all three kingdoms of life for biotechnological, biomedical and gene-therapeutic purposes. The technology could open up whole new opportunities in biomedical gene therapies,” Prof Charpentier said. As demonstrated by a large number of studies published over the last two years, DNA targeting by CRISPR-Cas9 has been quickly and broadly adopted by the scientific community to edit and silence genomes in a large variety of cells and organisms, including human cells, plants and mice.